Learning to breathe - part 2: Are transformations wishing wells?

So who's your Chris Powell?

The habit of watching real people living through ups and down die hard. The viewer-writer is always looking for more and more stories to inspire, to tell, to refashion into a poem or a non-fiction piece. Sometimes the lives of these real people whom she watches only from a great distance in time and/or place finds a seat in the corridor of characters she assembles for her novel that she will write someday. Either way, she can’t stop being a voyeur to life.

A character in a medical drama on a television channel once said that people watch reality shows in order to escape from them. That is but only one side of the coin. There are couch potatoes and then there are potatoes who want to be French fries. Okay, that was a really bad metaphor, but do you not agree that life is like a coin with two sides and the connecting joint that has no name?

Most of us flip that coin around all the while, unable to hold onto any particular face of it. Most of our lives are like the edge of the coin- connecting the heads and the tails and existing without an identity. What happens when we actually, I mean, really, really, truly recognize this fallacy of our lives? Either, we choose to live on in this in-between-ness with a sense of never even wanting to achieve either the heads or the tails of it. Or.

Or, we choose to push ourselves across the boundaries of this in-between-ness and into the domains of the extremes of either head or tails which in turn calls for an intense overturning of what we know of our existence. Ah! That sounds like the material of fictional protagonists!

The difference between the fictional protagonists that we usually encounter in films and novels and short stories, and us plebians, is that, they usually achieve a successful transformation, and the story ends there. We, on the sadder hand, always remain tangled; or rather, mostly remain confused and tangled in the matrix that is the process of transformation. So, what should plebians do? Here's a shortlist of choices:

1. Never venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
2. Forever venture into the extremes that create confusion and tanglement.
3. Think for ever and ever about what to do and hence remain indecisive forever.
4. Live a thriving life filled with ecstasy and injuries, choosing the opportunities of purposeful living over the ever-present fact of life being a wipe-out show of sorts. (another show I sometimes indulge myself with)

Chris Powell in the reality television show "Extreme Makeover: Weight Loss Edition" urges his clients to choose option 'd'. They appear on the show with unbelievable amount of excess weight. During the course of 365 days, the client is shown to achieve a goal to lose whopping amount of fat from the body. Now, these are usually people who instead of dealing with some kind of personal issue, had chosen to not care about themselves and participate in binge eating. And then, this guy who introduces himself as the one specialising in transformations, appears. 

This guy, Chris Powell, takes them on a journey of realising and facing some of their well-hidden emotions. Does this show have a fairy tale ending? It does and it does not. Some of these people do fail to keep up the motivation and falls back to old habits of binge eating and/or not caring about themselves when things get out of hand. You know old habits die hard. While some keep trying. They slip off their mark. They get up and they keep trying.

What does one do when one has a bad bugging old habit that die hard? What does one do when in spite of that habit one desires to lead a purposeful life, acknowledging the bruises that come along with the joys of life? Think of a rose, and, breathe. Sit up straight wherever you are. Feel your spine stretching down your back. Roll back the shoulder blades. Look up straight from your computer screen and breathe. Inhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Repeat till you feel profound as a wishing well. 

And then, maybe, write a response to this post? 

After-thought: A., my husband, sounds like Chris Powell when giving me a pep-talk . Hmmm. 

(To be continued) 

New years = Magic?

The new year wishes popping up in the inbox and the social networking sites remind me of a scene from the film The Runaway Bride. The 'runaway bride' of the groom who truly loves her sits in front of him, after quite a time since she ran away from the marriage ceremony on the day of the wedding. She tells him that she loves her and proposes marrriage to him. Further, she guarantees tough times in marriage. She also guarantees that if she didnot ask him to be hers, she will regret it for the rest of her life.
 

The list of resolutions are hung up on the virtual walls already, or, in our internal spaces. That is how it usually is. We promise this and that, to ourselves and to the world. To give up a bad addiction (of chocolates and chips, for me). To get up early from bed. To study way before the exam dates are announced. To relax and destress from tensions in the office. 

The list is endless. At the end of the year, we usally can't remember the promises tht we had made to ourselves 364 days ago. And, so, we make another list of promises.


My list of new year resolutions have consistently been as varied as 'I will be less lazy' to 'I will make new mistakes'. But this year around, my primary new year resolution is, to remember to live each day, one at a time, and, live each moment one at a time. This way, I hope, I would guarantee myself to remember the promises I have made to myself. Guess, that would be magic for sure!

What about YOU?


Here's wishing all the readers of Lustrous Lives a new year filled with possibilities to outshine the you, that was in the previous year, in mind,in body and in spirit. 

Happy new year to you, my co-walkers in this road of life!

stepping into creation

The initiative to write the previous post was largely derived from an event that happened the evening before. I was facing a writer's block. Ample thoughts were floating in the top-sphere, but, it was becoming increasingly difficult to harness them in words. I put down the pen and put on the cooking flame. 

It is only recently that I had realised my love for cooking. Along with finding the poetry in the act of cooking (the outcome of which was meditations while cooking... (click on title to read that post)), I have also realised how cooking with consciousness de-stresses me. During most of such sessions, I use conventional recipes. The act of de-stressing involves, in such cases, an awareness of the subtle change of aroma, of the colour of the spices and of the texture of the constituent elements. The evening in question gave me an opportunity to realise the effects of meditation in a new way.

while creating ...

As I stepped into the kitchen that evening, I had no idea what am I going to cook. I passed a glance through the storage counters in the refrigerator; it seemed it created certain sparks. I didn't mind having a disaster dinner, but I wanted to 'create' something 'new'. Stepping back from the 'busyness' of life, and the need to be 'proper', I wanted a breathing space of unadulterated joy of creating. The kind of joy that a kid feels while making arbitrary scratches of colour on the paper and defining them as something substantial. I became that kid in the kitchen. I had several ingredients at hand. I simply decided to cook on instinct. Instead of planning elaborately the recipe. I decided on the first step only (on hard-boiling the eggs). The next half an hour I spent making a paste of this, a batter of that, a spice mixture of this and that. As each of the ingredients, changed colour, changed texture, changed aroma, the mind not only felt relaxed; it was elated. Dancing to a flowing music of creation, I cooked that evening. At the end of that cooking session, I felt a joy that, in turn, re-invoked the confidence in my dreams and the possibility of creating some beautiful word pictures. The act to re-instate the poise in writing gifted me an additional pleasure of having a delicious dinner. 

Image courtesy: the web

rumbling crumbling 2 : all that is desired is 'magic'

"How can you make magic from the elements of combustibles ...."

 Purvi Shah, poet; author of Terrain Tracks

Some say life mirrors the vision one sees in it. If one is angry, hatred for things and for people fill the life. If one is joyful, one sees joy in everything and in everyone . It is the kind of expression that one may encounter in one of the innumerable courses on the art of living, as well. An apparently enlightened being will be saying it from the podium. And the ones listening apparently inject these enlightening words into their lives and transform it, just as if it could be achieved by a spell. 

Magic is very interesting. It shows changes occurring in a time frame that apparently seems impossible in the natural frame that the human eye sees. It amazes the mind and the mind applauds such feats. The next moment the audience steps out of the auditorium, and all that remains is the sense of amazement and appreciation. The magic is there no more, only a memory of it remains.

The interpretation of the "The Lamb" and "The Tyger", as delegated to us by our teachers in the course, was that, the poems are not so much about the individual animals, as it is about the One who made them. The One who can create the meek and mild lamb can also create a tiger "burning bright" in its "fearful symmetry". So all it said was about the 'magic' of the Creator???

Does the poem then end up like the speech of the apparently enlightened instructor of the art of living courses? Or, like the magician who only  can perform 'magic'? Does  a layman's life, with its "elements of combustibles", have the possibility of becoming magic???

TO BE CONTD.